


Murder Most Foul

by DashFlintceschi



Series: Mythological Creatures Alphabet Challenge [7]
Category: Bring Me The Horizon, You Me At Six
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, Ouija Board
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 00:39:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2089125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DashFlintceschi/pseuds/DashFlintceschi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You should always say Goodbye before walking away from a Ouija board. Or: Why no-one should ever listen to Max.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Murder Most Foul

**Author's Note:**

> G is for Ghost. I actually started writing this months ago, before I started these challenges, but I only finished it about a week or so ago, and decided to use it for G.

It started one night with one of Max’s stupid ideas. It always started with Max and his stupid ideas. There was nothing on TV, and we’d sickened ourselves of every game we had. None of us felt like going out, so we were sitting around whining when he came out with it.

“I found a Ouija board in the hall cupboard, we could mess around with that for a while,” he suggested, and stupidly, we all agreed. It was something we hadn’t done a million times before, and it sounded kind of fun, so we thought ‘fuck it, why not?’ 

It only took a few minutes for Max to get the board from the cupboard and set it up on the coffee table. We settled on the floor around it and each placed two fingers on the planchette. Chris was in the optimum spot, right in the centre of the board with it facing him, so he grabbed a notepad and a pen to write down anything that might happen. We all swore not to fuck with each other, then we decided to begin.

We all looked to Max expectantly, and he huffed.

“Oh, for god sake, fine. Is there anyone here with us?” He called out to the room, and we all sat with bated breath. After a minute, when nothing happened, he tried again.

“If anyone’s with us, please give us a sign.”

None of us really expected anything to happen, so I wasn’t the only one who cried out in shock when the planchette darted across the board and settled on ‘hello’. We all looked at each other accusingly, but we all shook our heads, muttering different versions of ‘wasn’t me’. 

“How many of you are there?” Matt asked unsurely, and the planchette slid across to the number 6.

“What are your names?” I asked softly, and Chris quickly got the pen ready.

His writing was barely readable as he quickly wrote down the letters without looking away from the board. ‘O-L-I-V-E-R T-O-M L-E-E M-A-T-T-X-2 J-O-R-D-A-N’ He showed us all the page and I gulped.

“How did you die?” I asked, my voice hoarse and barely audible. It was then that the planchette went nuts, spelling it out over and over, almost too fast to see. ‘D-R-U-M-E-R’. We all looked at each other in confusion.

“Do they mean ‘drummer’, or is it a name? Drumer?” Dan wondered aloud, causing the planchette to stop and shoot over to ‘no’.

“Which one are you saying no to? Is it drummer?” Max asked, and it went back to ‘no’.

“So, it’s a name, Drumer?” I asked, and again, it went to ‘no’.

We all frowned at each other in confusion, then Dan’s eyes lit up in understanding.

“It’s an anagram. They must have gotten confused. I… I think they’re trying to say ‘murder’.” The word had barely left his mouth when the planchette pulled my hand across the board so hard my shoulder clicked, circling ‘yes’ over and over.

I couldn’t take anymore as I pulled my hand back from the planchette and jumped to my feet.

“Right, that’s it. I don’t know which one of you is doing it, and I don’t care. This is fucking freaking me out, and I’m done,” I announced as I went over to the couch and flumped down on it. They all got up and joined me, all insisting it wasn’t them, but I knew it had to be one of them, it wasn’t me, and I didn’t believe in ghosts.

We went to bed soon after that, and I fell asleep quite quickly, despite their efforts to freak me out. I slept soundly all night, apart from a few minutes just after three in the morning, when I woke up shivering harshly, despite having Dan and our heavy quilt wrapped around me. I rolled over and went to get up and close the windows, but I paused when I saw a figure already standing there, pulling the last window closed. I murmured a soft ‘thanks’, then fell asleep again easily. I didn’t feel uneasy about it until the five of us were eating breakfast, and I remembered those few moments of wakefulness.

“Oh, thanks to whichever one of you closed our windows last night, I was fucking freezing,” I commented, and the three of them frowned at me in confusion. All three of them insisted it wasn’t them, and I frowned. “Well, it must have been one of you, Dan was definitely still beside me, and I saw someone close the windows,” I insisted, and they shrugged.

“I used to sleepwalk when I was little, maybe I did it in my sleep,” Matt suggested, and it seemed plausible, so I left it at that.

More strange things started happening after that. The lights would flicker constantly, despite the three separate electricians we called out saying nothing was wrong, and having no idea what could be causing it. Random spots in the house would suddenly go freezing cold, despite the boiler and all of the radiators working; the TV started flicking through channels on its own, and turning off and on by itself; small things like keys and pens would disappear from where we’d left them, only to turn up somewhere completely different, somewhere we’d never leave them, a few days later; and the two worst ones, I started sleepwalking and suffering horrific nightmares. Every night for a week, I had the same nightmare, where I was lying on the floor in what looked suspiciously like our basement, blood all around me, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from where they were locked with the wide, glassy, dead hazel eyes of the man across from me, still holding vestiges of the terror he’d felt in his final moments. My gaze would only be dragged away by the screams from across the room, where another man, who I felt like I knew, I just couldn’t place where from, was being gutted. I’d be forced to watch the two shadowy figures gut him, castrate him and finally slit his throat, before they turned on me, and I’d finally wake up screaming just before the knife made contact with my chest.

We were all ridiculously happy when the nightmares stopped, until three nights later, when I woke up to Dan’s gentle voice murmuring to me soothingly, and the feel of his hand in mine, pulling, as if he was leading me somewhere. When I woke up fully, I realised he was. We were at the bottom of the stairs, and he was trying to coax me back up to bed without waking me up.

“How did we end up down here?” I asked hoarsely, and he turned to look at me with sad eyes.

“You were sleepwalking. I woke up and got worried when I realised you weren’t there, and when I went looking for you, I found you in the basement, sitting on the floor, clawing at the concrete with your bare hands as if your life depended on it,” he explained as he led me back to bed, and I looked down at my hands, the pain finally hitting me as I acknowledged the broken fingernails and torn skin.

Again, this happened every night for a week, then stopped suddenly. I was both relieved and scared, wondering what was coming next. Thankfully nothing else happened, but that might have something to do with the fact that I was exhausting myself trying to convince Matt, Chris and Max that something was happening in that house. No matter how many times we pointed out the weird things that had happened, the weird, shadowy figures we’d all seen from time to time, they refused to believe that anything was happening.

So, Dan and I decided to figure it out on our own. We went to a part of the house that none of us ever really went near. The house was built in 1703, and other than the heating and electricity, it hadn’t changed much. The massive library the original owner had built up still lay in the massive room that took up the entire back half of the first floor, so we decided to start there. We had no idea what we were really looking for, so Dan started at one end of the room, and I started at the other, scanning the shelves for anything that looked like it might be useful. Almost an hour into our search, we both cried ‘aha!’ at the same time, far fewer shelves between us than I’d thought. I went to the end of the row and poked my head out.

“What d’you find?” I asked with a smile, which he returned.

“Three whole rows on the occult, you?”

“A whole row full of the history of the families that lived here, from the first that had it built in 1703, right through to 1917, I figure, they were already here, we just invited them to show themselves, so there might be a record of them in here somewhere,” I told him, and he grinned proudly, making me flush as we returned to our finds.

We were silent for another three hours, until Dan’s voice startled me from where I was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the bookshelf, totally absorbed in the history of the Forbes family.

“So that’s why!” I made a wordless noise of curiosity, and he laughed slightly. “I found why they’re still here. When you make contact with a Ouija board, you’re supposed to move the planchette to ‘Goodbye’ when you finish, we didn’t,” he explained, and I hummed in comprehension as he rounded the corner and plopped down beside me. “You find anything yet?” He asked as he peered over my shoulder, and I shook my head.

“I’m working backwards. I’m currently learning about the Forbes family that lived here from 1899 to 1904, haven’t found anything significant yet,” with that, he kissed my cheek and went back to his own pile of books. I didn’t find anything until I got to the last book, about the first family that lived here. I was almost at the end of the book, when I read something that made me call Dan’s name. 

Once he was sitting beside me again, I brought his attention to the book.

“Here, listen to this. _‘The Sykes family, whose patriarch, Ian Sykes, built the property, resided for only seven short years. They had intended for it to be the home they spent the rest of their lives in, but after both their sons, Oliver, the heir to the title of Lord Sykes, and the younger, Thomas, and four close companions of theirs mysteriously vanished in October of 1710, neither Lord nor Lady Sykes could bear to remain in the home they’ d intended for their sons to raise families of their own in.’_ Wasn’t that two of the names spelled out on the board? Oliver and Tom, I’m sure of it,” I insisted after I’d read out the passage, and Dan’s face lit up in sudden understanding.

“And I think I know where the next clue is,” without another word, he sprung to his feet and rushed out. I was slow to follow, determined to put all the books back in their rightful places out of respect. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, I just caught a glimpse of Dan going down to the basement with a pickaxe of all things. I didn’t even know we had one.

When I got down there, Dan was standing in the spot I’d sleepwalked to those nights, my blood still stubbornly smeared into the floor. Just as I got to the bottom of the stairs, he swung the pickaxe down into the floor with a grunt.

“What the buggery are you doing?” I asked as he pulled it above his head to swing again.

“I think one of them made you sleepwalk, I think they were trying to tell us something. So I’m going to pull this fucking floor up and find out what it is,” he told me breathlessly as he swung again.

I sat on the stairs and watched as he worked, knowing I’d be of absolutely no help whatsoever. Every know and again, I thought I saw a faint image of two men standing across the other side of the dim basement, looking an awful lot like the photo of the slaughtered Sykes brothers that had been in the book. Finally, way too many hours later, Dan broke through the concrete, coughing harshly as a rancid burst of dust flew up. He peered down through the hole he’d made, and gasped.

“Phone the police,” he insisted, and I frowned.

“Why?”

“Because their bodies are still under here, now phone the police, or something,” he insisted, and this time, I didn’t hesitate. When the police came to take the skeletons away, we claimed Dan had been fed up of me sleepwalking down here to claw at the floor. My fingertips were still in bad shape, so it wasn’t very hard to convince them.

Despite them being long since dead, and having no living family that we could find, we arranged a funeral for the six of them a few weeks later, once the police were done making sure we weren’t covering up murders we’d committed. Once we’d found their bodies, the house went quiet, until the night before the funeral. We were lounging around, watching TV, when I noticed something moving out of the corner of my eye. When I looked around, I spotted the Ouija board, still set up on the table, and the planchette, moving all on its own, or so it seemed. I snatched a notepad and pen from a side table and rushed over. I needn’t have hurried, he was just moving it around to get my attention. Once he was sure I was ready, he launched into his story. I noted it all down dutifully, and when he was done, I thanked him for telling me, and made absolutely sure to move the planchette to ‘Goodbye’ this time. I went back over and sat on the couch, ignoring the expectant looks the others gave me until I was settled and ready.

“It was Tom, he wanted to explain. He was the one that gave me the nightmares, and his brother led me down to the basement every night. They’re sorry for scaring us, they just wanted us to understand. My nightmares were Tom’s memories of his last moments. He told me that the two men I saw were people they thought of as friends, Curtis and Jona. They’d had a falling out, and invited the two of them over to patch things up. Apparently, they ranted and raved about Oliver and Tom being entitled, spoiled little brats, then killed the six of them and buried them under the house. They were never caught.”

My throat was dry and slightly sore once I was done, but I was grateful that Tom had told us. The rest of the night went quietly, and the next morning, the five of us, and a few members of our families that hadn’t been busy, were the only ones to attend the funeral. As we were standing beside the graves, watching the coffins being lowered, Oliver and Tom in the same grave but separate coffins, as their family tradition insisted on, I glanced up and saw two figures standing on the horizon, the same two figures I’d seen in the basement. The taller one, who I thought was Oliver, raised his hand in a wave, and the two of them vanished. I never saw either of them again after that, and nothing so much as twitched out of place in that house ever again.


End file.
